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as told.
    I dived into darkness.

Chapter 3
     
    I landed flat on my face, and spent the next few seconds spitting out dirt.
    My hands were out in front of me with gravel embedded in my palms. My knee had rammed itself into something painfully solid. My other leg was pinned under some kind of weight. Basically I was folded up and smushed. After my eyes had finished tearing up, I started to blink them open, then realized with a rush of panic that they
were
open.
    Dark. Pitch-dark. Hand-in-front-of-your-face, no-can-see dark. Not to mention cold and wet. Water drizzled like a light rain from somewhere in the darkness behind us.
    I tried to make a lightglobe and got a pitiful spark. No amount of effort would get it any bigger or brighter.
    The weight on my leg moved. Instinctively, I kicked.
    “Ow!”
    Piaras.
    “Sorry. Where are you?”
    “Right where you kicked,” came his pained retort.
    A blue lightglobe flared to life, and hovered briefly above Mychael’s open palm before he released it to hover by his right shoulder, and he peered into the dark as best as he could see with elven eyes.
    “Tam?” he called in a low whisper.
    “Clear as far as I can tell,” Tam said quietly from somewhere ahead in the dark.
    No Khrynsani. But for how long?
    Mychael’s lightglobe showed me that I’d somehow managed to slam my shoulder
and
knee into the corner of what I assumed was our supply crate. No wonder I hurt.
    Mychael, Tam, and Imala were on their feet; the rest of us had landed on other body parts, none of them particularly dignified. I grunted as I got to my feet and rotated my shoulder. Not dislocated, no breaks.
    “My lucky day,” I muttered.
    Piaras looked around him. “Yeah, lucky.”
    I didn’t want Piaras to be here, though it was better to be here and alive, than in that mirror room and probably dead. But the last place he needed to be was in the same city as Sarad Nukpana. The glance I shot at Mychael said all of that and then some. After me, Piaras was next on Sarad Nukpana’s slow-and-agonizing-revenge list. Mychael knew all of that as well as I did.
    “Welcome to the team, Cadet Rivalin,” he said.
    Carnades muttered something that I couldn’t quite make out, but Mychael heard it clearly enough.
    The rocks I’d landed on were softer than Mychael’s expression. “He’s here and a member of this team—a qualified member.”
    Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the glint of the magic-sapping manacles that Mychael held loosely in one hand behind his back. My heart went into double-time beating. Carnades wasn’t cuffed. Dammit, dam—
    Tam took a quick step toward Carnades from the side. For a split second, Carnades’s attention was on Tam—not onMychael, who closed the distance and snapped the manacles on the distracted elf mage.
    Mychael stepped back. “Thanks, Tam.”
    “Don’t mention it.”
    Carnades’s glare, at them both, was pure murder.
    Piaras laid his hand flat on the damp cave wall. “This is Regor?” he whispered to no one in particular.
    My knee popped and I winced. “A cave a few miles outside of it.”
    “Damn,” he whispered in awe.
    I agreed with the word, not the sentiment. There was nothing awe-inspiring about being within a few miles—or even closer—of Sarad Nukpana. Terror-stricken was about right. I didn’t think any of that had sunk in for Piaras. Yet.
    Tam had conjured a lightglobe of his own and sent its glow back toward the mirror. Carnades’s eyes followed the light to get a look at his mirror. The elf mage’s face suddenly contorted with rage.
    “Fuck!” he roared. The echo in the cave ensured that we all got to hear the word at least five times.
    “Silence!” Imala hissed.
    Tam spat a choice word of his own, drew one of his swords, and vanished back into the dark of the cave. If anyone was waiting to ambush, beat the crap out of, and dump us at Sarad Nukpana’s feet, Carnades had just done a damned fine job of announcing our arrival.
    I looked back at